music

Tether

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Whenever I meet a person
I like to think there is
a string tethered between us.
Not a cobweb or rough
rope but a violin, or a cascade
of violins, the song within you
within each person, too. I see
you in this coffee shop across
the block; thus, we are connected,
intertwined forever whether you
go to the space station or not
and I am stuck in Akron,
cursing God as ground-
dwellers do. Inhabitant of the heart–
in this world of small worlds,
this blue sunken sea I’m clung
to you at its depths, you cling
to me with the urchins
on your shirt, the breath
in your lungs my own,
each molecule moving
the way we together move.

(originally published in Poetry Salzburg Review, Summer 2023)

Cover

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Skinny Love isn’t your strongest (red
guitar grass blades, guzzles of beer)

the world doesn’t know your name
still I walk infinity eights through

your friend’s backyard evading dormant
dog droppings while the strumming lands

soft & sweet, butterflies on my cheek.
I’ll find a blanket somewhere to sit on

under the awning, a shade for when it rains

(originally published in Ink Pantry, Winter 2022)

The Percussive Life

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I bang my head all day– understand,
the end is not an option until I run out
of time (I am limitless until the zipper
closes, so to speak, an asphyxiation of a plastic
bag, its crinkle and shimmer under kitchen light). New

home but I do not yet know how to live
in it. Such few hours
inside. I used to push

my palms against fresh paint until my hands were
red, a deadening so expected I could pass through
and bereave the light that emerged
from its center, gushy and dim, how I would press
my thumb to its heart and play its saxophone’s minor
note, the bed I’d sleep in and wake
in the night on rumbling tracks.

(originally published in Eunoia Review, Fall 2023)

Deer

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Driving home from work tonight
on half-constructed roads, wet
with already-drying rain, ahead
of me a brown truck darts through
two busy lanes to get on his way.
How deerlike, I think, and
nothing more of it, until I’m
at a stoplight with unusual traffic,
and people congregate on sidewalks,
where there was recently emptiness,
a dread in the air, like construction
on these familiar streets that started
happening just outside of awareness.
A blue basketball rolls briskly in front
of my car, and two boys scream in
the silence of my Spotify, and I
wonder if I should pull over to
return the ball safely but I just drive
by and glance into the rearview mirror,
where one of them sprints from his yard
to his neighbor’s, through the converging
traffic, and I just try not to think
about it as I round the corner.

(originally published in Thirteen Myna Birds, Winter 2022)

Eiffel 65

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

             blue house
          with a blue
               tall weed
        sunflower heart blue
    snake on the window
           board half in half out half
         void no sun no blue
                the sky fence
            hill inside blue
          not blue no
             blue is the fire
           smoke and eggplant eyes
              blue death in drawings
           a deep blue wind and water
        dirt on my face and hands
     cobweb and dust blue dream on blue
  is purple is blazing eyes in your skull
     is my skull same face different
              blue flat and bright light
           blue silk on blue bed

(originally published in Ginosko Literary Journal, 2021)

Going to a Concert

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I know it was probably an isolated incident.
Still, we have tickets to see Future Islands
in Pittsburgh less than a week

after the bombing at Ariana Grande’s
concert in Manchester. You and me
and two close friends will be in close

proximity to throngs of strangers
for what has become a popular band.
I know it was probably an isolated

incident, but it does not take a tragedy
for a concert to become full of sudden
lights and screaming. I am not looking to fear

anything. But I am thinking of the children
who left their homes that night with the sunrise
in their eyes, expecting to cry only

at first familiar beat of their favorite song.
And I am thinking of the parents,
stopping at the arena with a car full

of excited kids, telling them to be safe
before watching their beloved become
silhouettes passing first into crowd

then crowded door. And I am thinking
of parents picking up their kids with
a frantic search through running bodies

and lights but only finding smoke
and sirens and sobbing, songs
we fear we’ll hear.

(originally published in Constellations, Winter 2021)

Khruangbin Concert, 2022

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

In the inner sanctum of throbbing
bodies, I groove hard beyond slow
walk of long-haired superstars,
headlight-eyed, mumbling inside
microphones amplified starward.
Diving deep into this band the
first time– an alien soundscape
of guitar echo and half-familiar
nostalgia for when we could live
forever, tapping wine bottles
with drumsticks to the rhythmic
thrum of how our lives were
going, no interruptions, propellor
hats attached and forever flying,
no batteries included, unnecessary.

(originally published in Roi Faneant, Summer 2022)